GTA IV wasn't even as badly optimized as people endlessly freaking make it out to be.

Yes.....in the beginning it was buggy and needed some patches. The patches came out, and the game ran fine. The game needed a high end PC because the game still to this day is one of the more impressive games in terms of technology on the market.

There is A LOT going on in that game if you crank every single setting up to maximum at 1080p or higher.---i5-3570k @ 4.2ghz | 16GB DDR3 | Nvidia 670 2GB SLI | 1TB HD x2

GTA3 - Required a great PC (for the time) to run at a good speed, but had better graphics than the PS2 version. Soon, most people could run this game at a good speed.

Vice City - Great port! This one was actually VERY well optimized. Ran faster than GTA 3, and had amazing graphics (a lot better than the PS2 ones).

San Andreas - This port was great too. Required a fast computer, but any PC that could run Vice City, could run San Andreas at "low" setting (wich made the game a bit uglier, but still better looking than the PS2 one). Had some issues with onboard cards, and some PCs couldn't run it at VERY HIGH settings, but all in all, was an amazing port.

4 - This one is a beast, even nowdays. But the patches fixed most issues, and forcing the game to run at 60 FPS fixes most speed issues. Like Goldrish said, the game looks amazing even nowdays, so its only natural that some weaker PCs can't run it well. I wouldn't say this is a great port, but its NOT bad. It DOES look better than the PS3 version.

Wanna know what's a bad port?!? Try Saints Row 2 for PC. Its almost impossible making this game run at a respectable speed, and even harder making it lag-free. Has MANY bugs and issues that Volition never bothered to fix (they even stated that the PC port was unfixable!), has some weird crashes happening at random, and the sound (and graphics) where downgraded from the console versions!---:3Everything is nice and cool... until the roach starts to fly!

It's not like the consoles can run GTA4 well either. I saw a glimpse of my friend playing it on his PS3 and it was noticeably low setting and sometimes seemed to drop to single digit FPS.---pathological

I just don't understand why people continue to crap on GTA IV for PC like it was some piece of garbage that's unplayable.

Turn that game up to 1080p (or higher) with every single setting (textures, shadows, view distance, detail distance, vehicle density, shadows, etc) up as high as they can go and tell me that STILL today that game doesn't stand up as one of the most visually impressive games on the market.

Yes there are games that look better. I'm not saying there aren't. But that game was released 5 YEARS AGO come December, and it still absolutely holds up with games released today. I'll wager right now if GTA V is released on the PS4/Xbox One, it will not look better than GTA IV on PC looks. And that's WITHOUT mods that make it look damn near photo-realistic.---i5-3570k @ 4.2ghz | 16GB DDR3 | Nvidia 670 2GB SLI | 1TB HD x2

If it really bothers you that much, why did you buy it? Do you not have any willpower? Besides which, I've watched videos of GTA V on the consoles and it really doesn't look that bad, a bit jaggy like most console titles, but it seems to look and run quite well for a game of that scope running on ancient hardware, I think the graphics hate is a bit out of hand.---Asus P8Z68-V LE | Core i7 2600K | 8GB G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3 | Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 Windforce OCPS3 | PS2 | PSP| Wii | 3DS | DS | X-Box 360 | X-Box | NES